ORLANDO, Fla. – An 11-year-old Florida boy is safe and his parents are facing charges related to abuse and neglect all thanks to a quick-thinking restaurant manager.
The Orlando Police Department said manager Flaviane Carvalho was working on January 1 when she saw a family withholding food from a boy at a table. Upon taking a closer look, Carvalho noticed the 11-year-old boy had bruises on his body and a large scratch between his eyebrows.
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Carvalho noted that the boy was very quiet and appeared to be sad. She quickly created a sign that the boy could see, but his parents couldn’t. According to Carvalho, the first sign asked the boy if he was OK. Carvalho showed the boy the sign, and he nodded “Yes.”
However, Carvalho still felt something was off.
“He didn’t convince me,” Carvalho said.
A few minutes later, she created a second sign. This one read, “Do you need help?”
To this new sign, the boy nodded “Yes.”
Carvalho then went to the back of the restaurant and called 911. Police arrived shortly after, and “wonderfully took over the situation,” according to Carvalho.
Investigators spoke with the parents and the boy, who gave police statements.
Police arrested the boy’s stepfather, Timothy Wilson II, on a child abuse charge.
The boy was taken to the hospital. The Department of Children and Families made contact with the boy. It was at this point that authorities learned about additional allegations of abuse.
The Special Victims Unit took over investigation from there. Based off of the new allegations, police arrested Wilson II again on three counts of aggravated child abuse and a count of child neglect. Police arrested the boy’s mother, Kristen Swann, on two counts of child neglect for her “failure to act and failure to protect the 11-year-old child,” according to police.
WKMG reported that the boy said he had straps tied around his ankles and neck and was hung upside down from a door. According to police, the boy also said he had been hit with a wooden broom and handcuffed and tied to a large dolly.
The boy said he was regularly denied food as a form of punishments, according to police.
“Abuse I say lightly, it was torture,” Orlando detective Erin Lawler said, according to WKMG. “What this child had gone through, like I said, was just torture there’s, there’s no justification for it in any realm.”
Orlando police chief Orlando Rolón said Carvalho’s actions saved the boy’s life.
“We are 100% convinced that it saved the life of a child and potentially a future abuse of his sister,” said Rolón. “The torture that that child was put through that we found through the investigative process, it was and in the opinion of the lead investigator, that that child was destined to be killed. That’s how severe the injuries were.”